


like a sunset

by super



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 16:33:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13080846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/super/pseuds/super
Summary: “You’re bleeding,” Gabe says the second Jesse enters his bunk.“Was,” Jesse corrects, unfastening his armor with a grunt. “Haven’t had the time to clean up.”





	like a sunset

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deerna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerna/gifts).



> i listened to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdSf1RFKcsE) on repeat while writing this and it eventually became my title. and deerna, buddy, i apologize in advance for being horribly rusty!!!! merry christmas!

Jesse’s fine. He’s fine.

His guns need cleaning anyway so he climbs up onto the roof of a storage shed and sits there among the clutter of wooden crates and dusty, sun-bleached tarps and takes them apart. It’s fine work for jittery hands and Jesse fumbles the firing pin twice before he gives the whole thing up entirely, one field stripped revolver at his crossed feet and a disconcerting, roaring _blankness_ in his head. His shoulder hurts. The back of his neck’s gone from warm and tacky to uncomfortably crusty.

He doesn’t think Gabe noticed.

Which is fine. Jesse can take care of himself. Jesse’s not sure he can handle it if Gabe did anyway, which is why he’s up here by the comm tower, the Overwatch flag whipping about in the sea breeze above him, the rest of the base going about their business twenty feet below. The ocean rails against the sheer rock face the watchpoint’s carved into and the air is cool and sharply clean. Fine red dust from the desert clung to saltwater during the mission - his arms, his face, his lashes - and now that he’s drying off he feels it falling off him like powdered snow.

He brought the badlands back with him.

He’s a fucking mess.

He thinks of Route 66 and of coffee that tasted like boiled dirt. He thinks of Gabe’s big warm hand on his back, of his low voice in his ear, steadying. He thinks of blood on the diner floor and his finger on the trigger. Then he stops thinking and puts his gun back together again.

 

\---

 

 

They flew into Santa Fe round midnight on a hoverplane with no windows, bogged down by rappelling gear and NVGs hanging from their necks. Jesse didn’t much like night ops - didn’t seem fair if they didn’t see you coming - but this was Blackwatch’s playbook and no one saw Blackwatch coming unless they let you. Jesse rolled a stick of cigarette between his fingers and didn’t light up, Gabe’s briefing washing over him like the darkness, warm and suffocating. Light discipline had to be maintained the second they were wheels up on the mission so Jesse stuck it in his front pocket for later.

Now it’s high noon back in Gibraltar and the slightly crushed cigarette tastes like copper and fear sweat underneath the smoke. His breathing evens out with each drag and Jesse stubs it out on the concrete when he’s done putting his gun back together. Maybe he’ll go make nice now, he thinks, flicking the cigarette butt into the ocean below. Hit the showers and wash everything off him. Say something to Genji. Grab some lunch. He’ll figure something out.

 

\---

 

He doesn’t do any of that but he makes it to the mess eventually.

It’s early evening, and Jesse’s done a whole lot of nothing all day -- will probably continue to do a whole lot of nothing for the rest it. He takes a sad sandwich with him to the hangar and picks at it, ensconced within the half-formed skeleton of a lunar colony dropship until he cannot possibly stand the sensation of sand in his boots for a second longer.

 _Traitor_ , they’d called him with their last breaths, spitting blood in his face.

“Ah, fuck it,” Jesse mutters, balling up the plastic wrap his sandwich came in and shoving it in his pocket. The drop down onto the metal catwalk beneath jars his bones, even through the strange humming between his ears.

 

\---

 

“You’re bleeding,” Gabe says the second Jesse enters his bunk.

“Was,” Jesse corrects, unfastening his armor with a grunt. “Haven’t had the time to clean up.”

Gabe’s nose scrunches at the lie, and it’s cute, Jesse thinks distantly. “I gave everyone the rest of the day off after the op,” Gabe says, frowning. The sheets are rumpled; Gabe’s been here a while.

Oh. Well. Gabe noticed, then. Jesse shrugs and scratches at his scruffy jaw.

“Jesse,” Gabe begins slowly, the worry evident in his expression.

“I could use a shower,” Jesse announces loudly. Not quite in a panic because he’s a little beyond it at the moment. He looks up from undoing his boots and catches the flash of hurt, the unhappy twist of Gabe’s lips before sharpness returns to his gaze.

He’s immediately sorry.

“Join me?”

 

\---

 

The hot water stings. The shower’s hardly large enough for two of them to fit but Gabe crowds them both in and doesn’t ask any questions that Jesse doesn’t want to answer. So he bends his head gratefully and allows the fussing, a reward and a delay tactic in one.

Gabe washes the copper out of Jesse’s hair with careful hands for several silent minutes. Blood and desert dust tinge the water with rust.

When he’s done, Jesse goes to his knees and takes Gabe into his mouth. Blunt fingers curl into his hair and Jesse hollows his cheeks and sucks and sucks until the grip turns sharp. It’s messy and sloppy and Jesse gets drool all down his chin for his effort. Gabe makes an airless noise as he comes, and Jesse spits into the drain before he gets on his feet.

 

\---

 

“Better now?” Gabe asks as they towel themselves dry. The arch lift of his eyebrow is an improvement from the constant frowning.

Jesse surveys the bruise on his jaw in the fogged-up mirror. “Maybe,” Jesse says.

The edge of the sink is cold where it presses into the small of his back. Gabe kisses him and he tastes clean and sharp and nothing like the desert at all.

“I think we can do a little better than that,” Gabe says, and Jesse chases the end of the sentence with another kiss.

 

\---

 

Gabe fucks him open with the same singlemindedness he approaches every challenge with. And Jesse, whether he means to or not, is somehow _more_ challenging when he keeps his silence. He’s wrung-out and cracked-open at the same time, running on empty save for the heat of Gabe inside of him. He drags Gabe close for more. 

“How about now?” Gabe pants, pressed deep in Jesse.

Jesse huffs and slaps an unsteady hand against Gabe’s straining shoulder. Gabe’s breathless laugh undoes something hard and snarled in Jesse’s chest.

 

\---

 

Gabe, it seems, is comfortable working with whatever he has. The patience shouldn’t come as a surprise but it does, and Jesse speaks first, long after their sweat has cooled and their breaths have evened, when the dull ache between his legs helps bring clarity back to his thoughts.

“We were friends,” Jesse says, half his face pressed into the pillow. His hair’s still damp from the shower, and he’s fairly sure the back of his head’s still bleeding sluggishly. Sure enough, Gabe lifts the towel he’s been pressing onto the shallow wound and it comes up faintly pink. “Sort of. Before all this.”

Jesse’s not sure if he means before Blackwatch or before he showed up in the middle of the night and murdered everyone with his new crew and called it justice. He makes a vague gesture with his hand that hopefully encompasses all of that.

The tired slant to Gabe’s mouth deepens. “You could’ve sat this one out,” he says, threading the needle with steady hands. “No one would’ve thought any lesser of you for it.”

He doesn’t flinch at the stinging prick of the needle. “Felt like the right thing to do,” Jesse sighs. “Cleaning up my own mess.”

“Was it?” Gabe asks. Jesse feels a tug on his scalp and sees the flash of a scissors out of the corner of his eye. The towel returns to apply pressure.

 _Traitor_ , they’d called him with their last breaths, spitting blood in his face.

Jesse wraps his hand around Gabe’s ankle and exhales.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”


End file.
